


Reality Doesn't Bite

by ListeningBoy



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 15:25:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17624942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ListeningBoy/pseuds/ListeningBoy
Summary: The gun is trained on the space directly between Chris’ brows, Gavin's aim holding steady even as he stares down his former partner and friend. The man stares back, eyes wet with pain and regret. One hand clutches his shoulder, the raw wound below it dripping red between his fingers.





	Reality Doesn't Bite

The gun is trained on the space directly between Chris’ brows, Gavin's aim holding steady even as he stares down his former partner and friend. The man stares back, eyes wet with pain and regret. One hand clutches his shoulder, the raw wound below it dripping red between his fingers.

_ God _ , this was so fucked up. To get bitten  _ now _ , when they were merely a day's travel from safety, from the ships that had been reported on the radio nonstop for weeks, ready to bring any survivors that could make it off continent, back to civilization. 

Every fucking horror they'd dealt with to get here, all the people they'd gained and lost, through it all Chris was the only one who'd stuck it out with him since they left Detroit, him and his family. Which was just as much in shit now. Done in by his own wife, who would have thought, one last love bite to seal their relationship. 'Til death do us part' and all that bullshit, come back to bite him in the ass, only slightly metaphorically, just like Gavin had warned him.

Chris had run in to get his kid, too. Damn thing was hiding in the bathroom now, not making a peep, had been silent as a lamb for months. Probably just as traumatized as the rest of them, but maybe he'd have a better chance at recovery since he was still so young. Or maybe it'd just fuck him up for life, that was probably more realistic. You couldn't bother with fanciful thinking anymore, it was the optimistic fucks who got chewed up and spit out in this world, with their brains gone and a taste for more to boot. 

Whatever got the kid to shut up right now was good in his books, there were too many dead walking around here for him to fight them off solo just cause they heard his crying. It was hard enough getting away the first time, they were lucky for the feeding frenzy that had stirred up with a fresh kill a couple meters behind them, keeping the mass occupied long enough to get away from the road and into this little half-wrecked house so they could take a break from running to think up a plan.

That had lasted all of two seconds. The bite mark wasn't exactly hard to miss, with how much blood had gushed from it when they were running, pumping blood worsening the scene, and Chris hadn't been trying to fucking hide it. No one did anymore, they all knew someone who had tried and ended up killing someone a day later, half the time their own loved ones, the only people willing to keep caring for them when they were 'sick’ and the rest of the group just wanted to leave them to die and keep moving.

Chris would never do that, he cared too much about his family, friends, everyone around him, he just cared too fucking much. It had lead to some fights in the past, with all the idiots roaming around too dumb to know how not to get in trouble you needed to practice some fucking  _ discretion _ about who you helped out.  Now, well, at least he’d only risked his own life this time, not that it made it any better to see him covered in his own blood than that of some dumbass who couldn’t defend themselves if you put them up against a single zombie with an assault rifle in hand.

Point was, even if he could get away with it, Chris wasn’t going to resist what was coming. They both knew it was a possibility from the beginning, knew it was pretty fucking likely even, that one of them would get taken down before they could get out of this hell. Between a bullet to the skull and who knows how long shuffling around with no thoughts other than how to best chow down on your friends, it wasn’t hard to make a choice. It was better to die by human hand than a zombie’s teeth; that was the agreement they came to. An agreement that they had hoped to never have to fulfill, but one they were prepared to if the time came.

And Gavin was prepared. He was. Damn it, he’d done this before, always the voice of reason when shit like this happened, the one to point out the risks, more than once the one who ended up with a freshly-shot gun in hand and a body on the ground in front of him. It wasn’t even  _ hard _ , not for him, he never ended those nights sitting alone, wallowing in his depression, not like some of the people they’d picked up. Those were the ones who usually ended up dead themselves a few weeks later, just as often by their own hand as by his.

He was hesitating now, though. Yeah, it made sense, this was his fucking friend, the man he’d been hanging out with since college, the man he’d gone through so much with in the last few months, but that didn’t stop Gavin from berating himself. There’d been blood on his hands long before everything went down, and now he had killed a couple dozen more, indirectly and not. That wasn’t a problem, he didn’t care about what he needed to do to survive, but that was the key, what he’d been holding onto to get him through life without fucking up. He did what kept him alive, any more and it strayed too far outside of his own moral code, he justified most of the ruthless decisions he’d made in his life by that rule.

If he couldn’t shoot now all of that crumbled. There shouldn’t be any difference between his friend and a stranger, he’d made this choice so many times it should be automatic. Chris was going to die, there was no helping him, and if he died he would come back within minutes and start to attack. All it would take was one bullet. One bullet and he would only have to die once, without so much pain, and without the danger to his friend and son.

Steeling himself, Gavin steadied the finger that had begun to tremble on the trigger. Chris was listing sideways, eyes unfocused, the grip on his arm weakening. He only had perhaps minutes left before he would be gone. Taking a stabilizing breath, Gavin gave Chris a solitary pitying look, hoping to convey to him through the haze that would be plaguing him in his final moments the sense of regret he felt at having to perform this duty, before finally allowing himself to pull back the trigger.

In the last moment, his eyes squeezed shut.

Silence rang in the wake of the shot. Everything went still, like time had paused, before resuming with more enthusiasm than before. Gavin heard unsteady feet outside, the hoard done with its last meal and hoping to find more by following the sound to its source. Not wasting a second, he bolted down the hall to the bathroom, scooping up the toddler huddling in the bathtub and rushing through the back door.

 

Outside, Nines scanned the area desperately for signs of life even as he was busy fighting back the pack of zombies that tried to find their way past him. They didn’t attack him, seemingly unable to tell an android apart from any other inanimate object, so single kills were easy, but the sheer number of them was giving him trouble.

Relief swept through him as he sensed quick movement and turned his head to find Reed running towards him, a child clutched to his chest. With a last lethal punch, he gave up on taking down all of them and ran towards the humans, moving faster than zombie or human could to reach them before they could be caught, snatching the gun held loosely in the man’s hands and unloading it into the few that were following too close for comfort. Gavin was out of breath, but Nines didn’t need to wait to speak. 

“The others went west,” he pointed, specifically to a spot a few streets away, though it wasn’t visible to a human eye he knew the exact location. “I’ve messaged Connor, he will have them wait for us.” With some trepidation he glanced back the way they’d come, “Is Chris…”

Gavin’s hands clenched tighter around the child. “He’s not coming.”

Nines nodded, there was no need to explain further. “Take Damian, get to the truck. I’ll circle around, keep you two covered.”

With a deep breath Gavin started up again in the direction Nines had pointed, keeping an eye out for danger but mostly focusing on keeping his mind empty, knowing the android would have his back if anything happened. It was rare that something he did followed him after the fact, but when it did he refused to dwell on it. That was a one way trip to the kind of depression he’d managed to avoid since high school, the kind that ended with him at the wrong end of his gun.

Instead, he kept running. Every step jolted a drifting thought from his head, and he sank into the blissful silence that occupied him instead, allowing nothing through but what was happening immediately around him and where he was going.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic wasn't really planned for. It came into my mind and by the time I remembered I was supposed to be working on something else I'd already written half of it lol.  
> I have some ideas for other stories in this verse, so it might get expanded on if there's interest.  
> __  
> You can talk to me at any of the sites below :)  
> Main Tumblr: http://listeningboy.tumblr.com  
> DBH Tumblr: http://gavinisqueerdbh.tumblr.com  
> PillowFort: https://www.pillowfort.io/ListeningBoy
> 
> Original Works: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LOTW


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